Quotes by Dodie Smith

About Dodie Smith:

Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith was an English children's novelist and playwright, best known for The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). Other works include I Capture the Castle (1948), and The Starlight Barking (1967). The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 Disney animated film version. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 a film version. I Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read (2003).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It isn't a bit of use my pretending I'm not crying, because I am... Pause to mop up. Better now. Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven.

Dodie Smith

My God - it's a green child!" said the American. "What is this place - the House of Usher?

Dodie Smith

I didn't make any mistake. I know that when he nearly asked me to marry him it was only on impulse It is part if a follow-my-leader game of second-best we have all been playing - Rose with Simon, Simon with me, me with Stephen and Stephen, I suppose,...

Dodie Smith

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.

Dodie Smith

...[I]f I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die---and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

Dodie Smith

He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

Dodie Smith

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!

Dodie Smith

But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

Dodie Smith

Did you think of anything when Miss Marcy said Scoatney Hall was being re-opened? I thought of the beginning of Pride and Prejudice – where Mrs. Bennet says 'Netherfield Park is let a last.' And then Mr. Bennet goes over to call on the rich new own...

Dodie Smith

I wanted so terribly to be good to him.

Dodie Smith

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

Dodie Smith

I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

Dodie Smith

There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.

Dodie Smith

... there is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means.

Dodie Smith

And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.

Dodie Smith

So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.

Dodie Smith

A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is a summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

Dodie Smith

I couldn't make it out - why you ever let me, I mean. I understand now. Things like that happen when you're in love with the wrong person. Worse things. Things you never forgive yourself for.

Dodie Smith

I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?

Dodie Smith

I could marry the Devil himself if he had some money.

Dodie Smith

She is a famous artists' model who claims to have been christened Topaz - even if this is true there is no law to make a woman stick to a name like that.

Dodie Smith

Author Bio

  • NameDodie Smith
  • DescriptionEnglish novelist and playwright
  • AliasesCharles Henry Percy; C. L. Anthony; Dorothy Gladys Smith
  • BornMay 3, 1896
  • DiedNovember 24, 1990
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Autobiographer; Novelist; Playwright
  • WorksThe Hundred And One Dalmatians; I Capture The Castle; The Starlight Barking; Dear Octopus; Autumn Crocus